


Day 30: Eyes - Window to the Soul

by 221b_hound



Series: Techienician: Botanical Love [31]
Category: Dredd (2012), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 30 Days of Techienician, Eyes, M/M, Surgery, Techienician
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 15:46:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8167372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: Techie can only be brave enough to face this surgery if Matt is there with him. Because Techie can only do this if he's awake the whole time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Readers please note that descriptions of surgery (without blood) may be uncomfortable for some. It's painless and blood free, but still. I even had to squint a bit in sympathy while writing it.  
> *  
> At last, the final day! My enormous love and thanks to @unremarkableawakening for starting this challenge and Atlin Merrick for encouraging me to take part!
> 
> Thank you to everyone who stopped to read this unusual and uncommon pairing - and special thanks to anyone who came to read it because they liked my other work, and had no idea who Matt and Techie were. Thank you for comments, and to the other 30 Days of Techienician participants. It's been wonderful!

Techie knows it’s asking too much. He’s asking Matt way much more than he should, however much he knows Matt loves him. If Matt says no, that’s okay. He’ll manage. It’s just that… it frightens him. Letting people mess with his eyes.

“Of course I will.” Matt doesn’t even hesitate.

“It’s too much,” Techie says.

“No it isn’t.”

“Nobody likes to see that sort of thing.”

“I won’t be watching it,” says Matt staunchly, “I’ll be looking you in the other eye and talking to you. We don’t have to pay attention to… the other thing. If we don’t want to.”

Techie is pretty damned sure he’ll be paying attention. Once his questioning determined it was both possible and safe, that was the only choice for him to make.

He’ll be awake for the entire surgery to treat his mech-eyes with a compatible organic casing so that his body stops trying to reject the implants. First the left eye, and once that’s back in his head and working properly, the right. All in one sitting. All under a strong local anaesthetic while he stays awake and is therefore not helpless.

Techie has asked Matt to be in there with him, to talk to him while it’s happening. He’s still terrified, even though he knows it’s a terror about past horrors. If Matt’s there, and Matt talks to him, he can do it. He will feel safe if Matt can be there and _be with him_.

Nobody wants to watch eye surgery, and it’s too much to ask, even of Matt. But Techie asked and without even a half breath of hesitation, Matt said yes.

The doc spoke initially of growing a pair of real organic eyes again, but Techie knew he couldn’t bear to go through that. Too many wires lead from the back of Techie’s eye sockets into his brain. Removing those, regrowing neural pathways, that is a much tricker business than the proposed operation. And for all that he hates what was done to him, these blue mechs are Techie’s eyes now. He’s had them for more than half his life. 

The medical complications decide that for him anyway. The casing treatment will take two hours in the chair. Anything else is days and weeks of surgeries, messing with his brain as well as his eyes, and he can’t. He just can’t.

But this he can do. If Matt is with him. And Matt will be with him. He’s promised, and so easily, like nothing is ever too much for Techie to ask of him.

*

Techie sits in a chair, strapped down to keep him still. He might have vetoed the whole thing right then and there, but Matt sits right in front of him, right where he can see, and holds his hands.

“We can stop if you want. We’ll leave right now.”

And because Matt gives him the choice, Techie stays. He lets Doctor Vashtakh strap his shoulders back and anchor his head to the back of the chair. He lets the nursebots place a little shield right down the middle of his forehead and nose and chin so that Matt doesn’t have to see what’s happening to Techie’s eyes if he doesn’t want to. He can just angle himself more on one side, then the other, and not have to see.

Techie lets the bots administer the anaesthetic until he can’t feel anything around his eye socket, nose and cheeks on the left side. They’ll do the right side when this one is done.

When he’s numb, the doctor starts.

There’s a mirror above Techie, in case he wants to watch for himself, to know what’s being done. He knows, though. He’s talked about it over and over with the doctor so that nothing will be a surprise.

First, now that he’s numb, the doctor will insert a needle in the centre of the mechanical eye, then little hooks will be activated that will allow the doc to disengage the mech and lift it out. The empty eyesocket, with its wires implanted at the back, will be bathed in organic solution embedded with Techie’s own DNA, to coat the exposed mech connection points and prepare his body. In the meantime, his eye – and they’ve do this on the side he can see with, so he knows exactly what’s going on – will be bathed in a similar solution, then held with tiny tractor beams in the centre of the device that will coat it all round, even over the iris which touches his eyelids, with the compatible casing. The casing is clear and won’t interfere with the function of his eye at all. It’ll be thicker at the back where it’s embedded in his skull; thinner at the front. It takes time for the coating to go on correctly, but once his eye is back in place it will be immediately operational. He won’t even need the healing time Matt had for his eyes.

“Techie? Baby?”

Techie breathes. Exhales. Matt’s hands are curved around his. Techie has enough movement to turn his hands up and grip tight.

“Hard as you like, baby. I’m here.”

The needle lowers towards Techie’s left eye. Techie can’t watch. It’s too much like that other time. He shuts down the optics in his left eye to sleep mode and  his right eye opens wide.

“Talk to me. Please. Matt. Please. Talk to me.”

Matt squeezes his hands.

“The handover at work is going really well. Leslee leaves in a few days, but she says I’ve got everything I need. I think she’ll be happier planetside. She finally admitted she doesn’t much like ship life. And she apologised about Jex and Parvinak and not doing anything sooner. And she asked for the muffin recipe. And how we cooked them that time it was just a layer of muffin over tinfoil, just when those two thought we’d forgotten.” Matt squeezes Techie’s hands again and smiles encouragingly as, in his peripheral vision, he sees Techie’s precious eye lifted away. Bots are squirting solution into Techie’s empty eye socket, behind that barrier. “Anyway, she says she thinks I’ll be a good Shift Supervisor, and with that pair on different sanitation teams for the foreseeable future, it’s going to be pretty good, I think. Yeah. I’m looking forward to it. And there’s a pay rise. I’ll buy us something nice.”

Techie is trembling, holding Matt’s hands so tight that there might be bruising later, but Matt doesn’t seem to notice.

“Our patch of the Peace Garden’s looking good,” continues Matt. “I thought we might try spigage for the next crop, maybe with some puzzleflower, you know, those things from Nimban. I think the General’d enjoy working how to unlock the petals. Don’t you?”

“Mmm,” is all Techie manages to say. He can feel the panic sitting like a crab in his throat.

“You tell me, now,” says Matt, “Tell me something. What was that late job for the General yesterday? I was asleep when you got back.”

Techie takes a shaky breath. He forces his breath out through the panic-crab. “Lieutenant Mitaka… n-needed his own w-workstation set up in the G-General’s quarters, and the General asked me to see t-to it.”

“How’s their kkortree?”

They’d given General Phasma and Lieutenant Mitaka a cutting from their own kkortree as a betrothal gift.

Techie flashes a sudden smile, and the stutter vanishes. “Captain Kit was curled up in the pot, purring. She made the leaves shiver, you know, like they do when they like the voice they hear? It’s twice as big now. They must make a lot of noises it likes. And the wire cat I made her is still there, on her workstation. I made a little wire hat just like Mitaka’s to sit next to it.”

Matt laughs. “They’ll like that.”

Techie’s eye, now bathed, is balanced in the coating device, poised on tiny tractor beams, on the right. Techie’s right eye watches, and he shivers.

Matt lowers his lips to Techie’s hands and kisses his fingers. Techie can feel Matt’s lips move, unspeaking so it’s only for him, the shape of _Mus, Mus, Mus_ on his skin.

“Gazan loves living near Lu,” says Techie shakily, tearing his right-eye-gaze away from the device and focusing grimly on Matt.

“Mom loves her being so near too. She’d have Gazan in the apartment with her and fuss her to madness if she could.”

“Gazan says she likes Lu’s fussing, but not all the time.”

“I know how she feels. But I’m really glad she decided to transfer from Talus to Corellia. I like it that Mom’s real close if Gazan needs her.”

“And the other way. Gazan likes Lu’s cooking too. Better than hers. Gazan is a terrible cook, she says.”

“I remember those sweetcakes she tried to make.” Matt pulls an exaggerated face, sticking out his tongue like he did that time with that awful, pungent fruit at the market, and Techie manages a nervous laugh.

That’s how the hour goes. Matt and Techie talking about work and family and cooking, about everything and nothing. When Techie feels the fear overwhelming him, he squeezes Matt’s hand tight, and Matt doesn’t even wince, but kisses Techie’s fingers and talks and talks and talks.

The left eye goes back in. When Doctor Vashtakh says so, Techie engages his optics again.

Everything good. Everything clear. Everything 100% A-OK and in perfect working order.

Doing his right eye is less frightening after that. Techie’s not exactly relaxed, but he’s less anxious. Especially when Matt sings silly love songs to him. Gazing at each other, Techie gives Matt a wobbly smile and sings along. His voice shakes, but so does Matt’s, and it doesn’t matter at all. The only thing that matters to Techie is that Matt is here, and he’s not alone, and it’s all his own choice, and everything is all right. Matt never looks once at what the doc and the bots are doing, though Techie works out that it’s sometimes overwhelming for Matt too. When Matt seems to be feeling it too much, he kisses Techie’s fingers again. He silently mouths, _Mus, my little mouse_ , against Techie’s skin, close where no one can even read his lips, and they both feel better.

Two hours later, Techie’s eyes are back in. They are both working. Doctor Vashtakh unstraps Techie’s head and torso and he’s finally free of constraint.

Techie looks into the mirror above and he can see that the skin around his eyes is, for the first time he can remember, the same pink as the rest of his face. Not red and sore. Just pink and healthy.

His eyes don’t ache. His skin isn’t sore. He thinks… he thinks… this might be how it used to feel when he just had his own organic eyes.

“Techie?”

Techie smiles at Matt. A big grin. A big, beautiful, bright grin.

“They don’t hurt. I can see and they don’t hurt.”

He doesn’t expect Matt’s face to crumple, spilling tears. He doesn’t expect Matt to fold down and wrap his arms around Techie’s waist, and to bury his face against Techie’s belly and just hold on, hold on, hold on tight.

Techie strokes Matt’s hair and his shoulders.

“Ssssh, Mattie,” he says softly, tenderly, as lovingly as he knows how, “It’s all right. We’re all right. Thank you, baby. Thank you. Thank you.”

Matt’s only reply is to squeeze tighter and rub his face into the soft flesh under Techie’s softer shirt.

Techie cannot believe how he was lucky enough to get this man in his life. Tall and sturdy and safe as a tree, his Matt. His Matt who can bend and not break, and be a place to rest. His Matt who is sun and shade and a shelter under which Techie can grow and be his own self.

“I love you,” Techie whispers to him.

“’ve ‘ou, ‘oo,” comes the muffled reply. Techie feels the name on his belly, mouthed and not said where others can hear, “ _My Mus, my mouse, I love you.”_

*

The procedure could not be more of a success. Within two days, Techie is back at work as though nothing is different. And really, apart from not hurting any more, nothing is.

 Matt and Mus both have new eyes now.  But they are their old eyes too. Matt’s soft brown eyes no longer look through a window; Techie’s bright blue mech-eyes still whir wide and then narrow and see more than his human eyes could.

They are still Matt’s eyes; still Techie’s eyes.  They still truly and properly _see_ each other. Their eyes are still filled with that knowing, and with all that love, and with every hope they ever had for their lives, fulfilled.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the image I created for the Tumblr post of this story - Matt's and Techie's eyes, edited in Enlight.  
> 


End file.
